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 you're going in and you're going to stay there." His voice suddenly changed. "Have you gone crazy? Do you want to get killed? Are you trying to worry your mother and me to death?"

Bert squeezed his way back through the door and made for the sanctuary of his room. Downstairs he heard the pitch of his father's voice, his mother's one cry of alarm, and his father's exasperated: "I don't know what's got into the boy. He was never like this before. I ought to flog it out of him." What his mother said in reply to this he could not catch. After an interval his father's step sounded in the lower hall. He held his breath. But the step went on to the porch, creaked on the wooden steps, and died in the distance of the street. So intently did he listen that he did not catch a lighter step behind him. His mother's voice startled him.

"Why did you do it, Bert? Didn't you know the danger?"

He tried to explain how easy it had been, but the look on his mother's face halted him.

"If it is so easy, Bert, why are so many railroad brakemen killed? Didn't you stop to realize how much this might worry us? Why did you do it?"

"I guess we just wanted to have some fun."

"Fun! Bert! Did you think it would be fun for us if anything happened to you?"

Her voice stabbed him with a realization of the folly of his escapade. "I . . . I won't do it